


Circuitry

by ishafel



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:56:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are all products of our design.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circuitry

It is her first time with Helo on Galactica, her first time with him since he found out what she is. She is nervous, and she thinks that this must be how humans feel: how virgins feel, women on their wedding nights, waiting for their husbands to make love to them. She has no clothes that are not military issue, and so she brushes her hair until it shines and climbs into bed naked.

And then Helo comes in, and she forgets to be worried. He is so lovely, her new husband, so big and so gentle. She is an Eight, and Eights are made to be loved, and she wants him to love her. When he sees her, his face softens, and she smiles at him. Unlike Six, she is incapable of coyness, but she feels suddenly shy, with his eyes on her, his sudden realization that there is nothing covering her but a sheet.

She has read enough about humans to know that women are universally self-conscious about their bodies, and for the first time she understands why. The last time Helo saw her like this she was perfect, but now she has battle scars no Eight, no Cylon, have ever carried: the marks of a woman who has born a child.

Helo looks no different than he did on Caprica—drier, maybe, a hairsbreadth less close to starvation. Whereas she is someone else entirely, not Boomer but Sharon, not a woman but a machine. She is half-afraid that when he touches her he'll be looking for gears, for wires; she is half-afraid he'll be disgusted by the stretch marks on her stomach.

"Come to bed, Karl," she says and drops the sheet. Helo's eyes flick, startled, to her face, and then drop to her breasts. He licks his lips. She pats the bed invitingly, and he shudders and pulls off his tanks in one quick motion.

"Sharon," he says, as he sits down beside her. The mattress groans under his weight. He kisses her once, quickly, and leans down to unlace his boots.

She watches him. He is so beautiful, and he is hers. She slept with the males among the Seven, because Boomer had been with men before—but none of them had Helo's lean muscle, or Helo's golden skin, or even Helo's sweetness. They were duty, and this is pleasure.

He rolls on top of her, and there is nothing at all between them but the sheet at her waist. There is nothing perfunctory about the way he kisses her now, nothing hurried about the way his fingers curl in her hair. His mouth tastes like candy, and not like rain, but it is familiar to her the way being resurrected is familiar, comfortable and strange as her own mouth, her own body.

His lips move from her mouth to the curve of her shoulder, from the hollow of her throat to her breasts. Her breasts, which are still perfect, because her daughter never nursed from them. She leans back and closes her eyes, and tries not to think about what might have been.

"Sharon?" Helo asks, his mouth against her ear. "Are you crying? I'm not that bad, am I?"

She blinks hard and smiles at him. "Of course not," she says. "Just too slow. No wonder you never made it as a Viper jock."

"You want to know why I didn't make it as a Viper jock?" Helo demands. "I was too big to fit in the cockpit. If you know what I mean--."

He's leaning on his elbow, smirking at her. Sharon pushes him down on to his back. Hera is dead. She isn't. Helo isn't. Surely God owes her this. Surely this is a part of God's plan. "I don't know, soldier. I'm going to have to take some measurements and get back to you on that."

She leans over him and licks his stomach, and she giggles when he yelps. "That's right. Uphold the honor of Raptor pilots everywhere by making noises like a ten year old girl," she says mockingly, and without any further preliminaries she takes the head of his cock in her mouth.

He tastes of salt, like the ruined Caprican sea, and of the unscented military-standard soap they all use, and of himself. She has not done this very much, because even Cylons know you can't get pregnant this way. She doesn't really like it, but Helo does, and she likes the way he clutches at the sheets, the way his back arches as she licks her way down the length of him.

Her experience is limited, but he's bigger than anyone else she's been with, big enough she can't get him all the way into her mouth, even from this angle. Maybe he was even telling the truth. Maybe the Academy really did pick Viper pilots by penis size—or lack there of. There are a lot of things about humans she doesn't understand. Maybe that's why she likes Helo. Helo is simple. Helo is exactly who he seems to be.

She does the thing Three taught her, with her tongue. Helo shouts, and his fingers twist in her hair, and she can feel him tremble. She did this to him. Whatever she is—whoever she is—however she thinks of herself, he thinks of her as a woman. If she didn't love him already, she'd love him for that.

He's close to coming, and she stops for a minute, really looks at him. She was careless on Caprica, and she took what they had for granted. But she's been alone for a long time, and her body is like a human woman's: it was made to be touched, made to be held, made for this. If she loses him again she wants to remember everything. "Keep going," he begs. "Sharon, please."

She swallows him again, as deep as she can, and he comes. She moves over and lies beside him, with her head on his chest, and he puts his arm around her. He makes her feel small, delicate. Human. And she can hear his heart beating beneath her cheek, fast and steady. She loves him; it's what she was made for. He loves her, despite that.


End file.
